


Keeping Promises

by withcoffeespoons



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Temporary Character Death, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 14:23:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7271800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withcoffeespoons/pseuds/withcoffeespoons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Guess it didn't stick."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeping Promises

It happens in the middle of the night. Tim’s usually a heavy sleeper, but the constant moving, hotel room to hotel room, has him anxious, and what little sleep he does get is fragmented and flimsy. He barely wakes at the sound of the door, used to Jay’s coming and going, his compulsive need to check the cars, test the locks.

There’s something different about it this time, the door stays open just a second too long, and Tim’s eyes snap open a second before Jay cries out in fear, stumbling in the dark.

“Alex?”

The name alone has his heart pounding. Tim draws himself up rapidly, trying to free himself from the bedcovers. Alex rushes into the dark room, his hair and clothes in disarray, his back illuminated only by orange light from the parking lot.

“Where is he?” Alex demands, gripping Jay by the collar. Tim feels the bottom drop out of his stomach as the light glances off sharp metal at the base of Jay’s throat.

“What are you doing here?” Jay asks, and Tim can hear the waver in his voice; he only hopes Alex misses it.

Alex only repeats the question, and it only takes a slight shift in the angle of his knife for Tim to answer, “Right here, asshole.”

His body is tense, and he’s aware of how sluggish he is from sleep, but he stands, poised for a fight, not once taking his eyes off the knife.

Alex abandons Jay and lunges after Tim. Tim can see the flash of incredulous panic on Jay’s face for a second before he grips Alex’s wrist, trying to twist the knife out of his hand. Alex has the clear advantage, and the second his wrist slips out of Tim’s grasp, Tim’s eyes slip closed; he knows what’s going to happen.

Except it doesn’t. Alex cries out, and Tim’s eyes snap open. Jay grabs Alex’s arm, his fingers reaching for the handle of the knife. Alex wrenches his wrist away and jabs Jay with his elbow, the force enough to throw him back on the floor with a pained gasp.

For a moment suspended in time, Tim can only see Jay, struggling to get back up, catch his breath, draw Alex away. But Alex turns quickly on Tim, and slashes the knife at his chest. Tim throws himself out of the way, his t-shirt splitting under the knife as it nicks him on the way down. He lands badly, his arm hitting the floor hard as it takes the majority of his weight.

Alex, looking angrier for having been eluded, stands over Tim. “I’m done chasing you,” he says darkly.

“Alex, no!” Jay shouts. There’s a flurry of movement, and Tim’s sure Jay is trying to knock the knife away, except Alex lunges, and there’s a sickening noise that stops them all.

Jay lets out a wet gasp, and Alex’s furious mask breaks, his eyes wide, staring at the knife in Jay’s chest. He opens his mouth to speak, but remains silent, reaches abortively for the knife before stumbling backwards and out the door.

“Okay?” Jay asks. The words are thick and wet, and they leave a stain of blood on his lips. He tugs at Tim’s shirt, and he realizes Jay’s looking for a wound.

He hovers over him, watches his chest move in shallow breaths. He reaches first for the knife, then, second-guessing himself, for Jay’s hand, stilling it. “I’m fine,” he bites, his voice gravelly. “Got some nerve,” he starts, before choking on the rest, his anger cracking. “The hell were you thinking?” he asks desperately, gripping Jay’s hand so tight he can feel his own pulse in his fingertips.

“Saved you,” Jay says. He coughs wetly, winces so hard a tear slips down his face. He looks around the room, then up at Tim’s face, and Tim can see the concern and fear warring in his eyes. “Alex?” he asks, his cheeks twitching from the effort.

“Gone. We’ll deal with him later,” Tim says, trying to forget about that frightened little boy look on Alex’s face, so different from the aggression only moments before.

Jay winces. “ _You_ will.”

Tim shakes his head, trying to fight the words back. Because he could have taken it, he’s lived through worse, hell, he’s died and come back from worse than a knife to the gut. Jay was so stupid sometimes.

“I should take that knife out,” Tim says, already tugging at the bedsheets. There isn’t a lot of blood, not with the knife still lodged in Jay’s chest.

Jay’s breath shakes, and this time it’s definitely fear. “Tim, I don’t–think it’ll make a d-difference.”

But Tim can’t bear to look at it. It should be in his own chest, not Jay’s, he should be the one bleeding on the floor.

Jay tries to take a deep, steadying breath, but he chokes on blood, squeezing Tim’s hand tight in pain. Tim pulls away reluctantly. His hand shakes as he grips the handle of the knife. “This is gonna suck,” he warns, like Jay doesn’t know. Jay closes his eyes tightly, tenses up all over.

Tim yanks.

Jay screams through gritted teeth and blood trails down his chin and spreads across his chest before Tim presses the wadded sheets down. Tim whispers muffled apologies and fights to keep his own breathing even, the tears from streaking his face.

Jay’s blood is warm beneath his hands, soaking rapidly through the cotton.

“Tim.”

“It’s okay, I’m sorry, I know, bad idea.”

“Tim,” Jay repeats, more firmly. He reaches up weakly and touches Tim’s wrist with cold fingers. “’s not your fault.”

The words hang between them, leaden and hollow. His touch is heavy, willing Tim to hear him, to believe him one last time, those words he’s repeated over and over to him.

Tim doesn’t say anything. Tears escape instead of words. There are so many things he wants to say. Pained things and desperate things and things that don’t make sense. Angry things and bitter things and hopelessly selfish things. But none of those things are fair, not to Jay.

All Tim can focus on are the dark flecks of blood on Jay’s fingertips, the swirls of red his fingerprints leave on Tim’s skin. It’s easier to look at the blood on his hands than at Jay’s face, the trickle of blood down his chin, his paling pallor, the dark shadows ringing his eyes–always there, but this time so much more pronounced. Every aborted motion, every twitch of his mouth and unfocused flicker of his eyes tells him the same thing: Jay is dying.

No, he thinks, looking now into the unblinking eyes still focused on Tim’s face. His chest is still beneath his hands, the flow of his blood slowing, his breath–gone.

Jay is dead.

All Tim can hear is his own breathing, his throat aching to fill too large a room, too empty a space.

He looks down at himself, blood covering his hands, soaking into his jeans, into the sheets and the carpet. He pulls away, rests his back against the mattress and tries to breathe more slowly, more quietly.

He lifts his hands to his face, tries to ignore the nauseatingly metallic smell. Finally, his breath leaves him in a heavy, ragged sob. Then another. And another. Then Tim can’t stop, can’t control his breathing or his face, or the pain and loneliness creeping under his skin.

It takes him almost ten minutes to pull himself together.

He wraps his arms around his middle, digging rough-bitten nails into his skin. How many times had he wanted to kill himself, how many times had he taken a blade to his skin or a handful of pills to find an end, only to wake up sick and cold and painfully alive? And Jay gambled his own life away to save Tim.

It was so endearingly pointless.

And now Tim is alone again. Next time Alex comes after him, he thinks, he better finish the job for good.

He sobs softly into the palm of his hand, “No, no,” teeth biting into the flesh to force back the scream he wants to release. It should have been him, he knows that. He should’ve known. He ruins everything he touches.

He hardly remembers his next movements, washing his hands, scrubbing until his skin is red and raw, but the blood is gone, Jay’s blood washing down the sink.

Tim’s clothes, the bedsheets, the towels. The knife. Everything stained by his blood stacked in a messy pile in a corner of the hotel room.

Everything but the body.

Jay’s body.

Tim crouches beside him, feels cooling skin and eerie stillness as he tries to lift him.

At the deafening gasp and jerking of Jay’s muscles, Tim drops him, staggering back, his heart pounding and thoughts racing.

Tim immediately questions his sanity, his perception, his consciousness. How can Jay possibly be alive?

But Jay pulls himself up into a sitting position, his chest heaving, still covered in dark, flaking blood. But he’s breathing, blinking, moving. If Tim tries hard enough, he can see the vibration of the kickstarted pulse in Jay’s neck.

“J-Jay?”

Jay’s shaky breathing slows at the sound of Tim’s voice, and he runs his hands down his chest, pausing at the two-inch gap where the knife was plunged into his chest. He sticks a finger in the shirt and feels the skin underneath. He hisses and pulls away. “That was real, right? That happened?”

Tim reaches out and takes his hand, wraps his fingers around his wrist until he can feel the strong, steady pulse. “You died,” he confirms.

“Guess it didn’t stick.”

They clean up. Jay showers and adds his clothes to the pile of soiled garments. Tim digs out a large plastic bag and gets them out of sight–at least for the time being. There’s no saving the carpet, and no explaining it, either. It’s an awful lot of blood.

They leave in the middle of the night, leaving the fictional _Gerald Burton_ with the charges. Tim tosses that credit card into the fire when they incinerate the bloodied fabric. Jay watches the flames with pained fascination.

* * *

 For days Tim tries to ignore the rage that swells inside him whenever he looks at Jay, but his willpower can only hold out so long.

“You’re so fucking stupid sometimes,” he shouts at Jay one day, out of nowhere. The rest stop is abandoned, but he’s pretty sure he startles some birds in the trees. He doesn’t seem to startle Jay, which only makes him angrier. “Alex stabbed you,” Tim says slowly. “You bled out in my goddamn arms, and none of it had to happen!”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m fine!”

“You were dead over an hour!” Tim roars, gesturing widely. “You had no way of knowing you could come back from that, neither of us did.

“But me,” Tim continues, “I’ve done it, we’ve both seen it. And more than that time, too. Pills. Knives. Who knows what else, I sure don’t remember it all. I would have been fine.”

“I wouldn’t!” Jay cries, and his voice breaks on the words. Tim staggers back; it’s already the most emotional he’s ever seen Jay. “Did you ever think of that?” he adds, wide-eyed. “Did you consider what it would do to me? If I had to watch you die? Again?”

Jay’s tension wavers. “You’re all I have anymore.” He falls back, leaning against the hood of his car, looking down at his feet on the sand, breathing heavily.

Tim listens to the sound. “No,” he says quietly, “I didn’t.”

He walks past Jay, his feet kicking the gravel, as he heads for his car. Jay grabs him by the wrist, stops him short.

“I’m okay,” he says.

Tim turns and stands square to Jay. He reaches out a hand and presses it to Jay’s chest, covering the raw skin that was once gaping and bloody. Jay lets him.

“Don’t do it again,” Tim tells him.

“I won’t.”

“Promise.”

“Yeah, sure. I promise.”

They drive on.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted on Tumblr June 7, 2013.


End file.
